Give and Take

My guests are Bradley S. Klein and David Shields. Klein has played golf with Trump, written about him as a sports journalist and consulted on his golf courses. David Shields has written one of the most provocative and revealing books about Trump, Nobody Hates Trump More Than Trump. If you're looking for an interesting Trump conversation in the midst of Corona, this is it.

Special Guests: Bradley S. Klein and David Shields.

My guest is Yaron Weitzman. He's the author of Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports. When a group of private equity bigwigs purchased the Philadelphia 76ers in 2011, the team was both bad and boring. Attendance was down. So were ratings. The Sixers had an aging coach, an antiquated front office, and a group of players that could best be described as mediocre.

Enter Sam Hinkie -- a man with a plan straight out of the PE playbook, one that violated professional sports' Golden Rule: You play to win the game. In Hinkie's view, the best way to reach first was to embrace becoming the worst -- to sacrifice wins in the present in order to capture championships in the future. And to those dubious, Hinkie had a response: Trust The Process, and the results will follow.

The plan, dubbed "The Process," seems to have worked. More than six years after handing Hinkie the keys, the Sixers have transformed into one of the most exciting teams in the NBA. They've emerged as a championship contender with a roster full of stars, none bigger than Joel Embiid, a captivating seven-footer known for both brutalizing opponents on the court and taunting them off of it.

Beneath the surface, though, lies a different story, one of infighting, dueling egos, and competing agendas. Hinkie, pushed out less than three years into his reign by a demoralized owner, a jealous CEO, and an embarrassed NBA, was the first casualty of The Process. He'd be far from the last.

Drawing from interviews with nearly 175 people, TANKING TO THE TOP brings to life the palace intrigue incited by Hinkie's proposal, taking readers into the boardroom where the Sixers laid out their plans, and onto the courts where those plans met reality. Full of uplifting, rags-to-riches stories, backroom dealings, mysterious injuries, and burner Twitter accounts, TANKING TO THE TOP is the definitive, inside story of the Sixers' Process and a fun and lively behind-the-scenes look at one of America's most transgressive teams.

My guest is Bob Holman. On December 3, 2019, Bowery Books simultaneously released two new books of poetry by Bob Holman—written 50 years apart. LIFE POEM and THE UNSPOKEN serve not only as bookends to a lifetime immersed in words, performance, and the avant garde, but they also show the evolution of an artist, an art form, and a downtown art scene that’s gone from Allen Ginsberg to Lou Reed to Eileen Myles to Mahogany L. Browne. He's also a New Yorker in the midst of the epicenter of the Corona pandemic.

LIFE POEM is a recently rediscovered book-length poem Holman wrote at age 21, new to poetry and first in its thrall. Filled with “jounce and pounce,” as Gwendolyn Brooks says, it’s a hippy diary full of communes, Vietnam, romance, and a driving love for language that ended up lasting a lifetime. THE UNSPOKEN is a collection of recent works, written by Holman, A WIDOWER in his 70s, still devoted to poetry, but now with decades of experience, memories, and loss to inform it. There are poems of all sorts: personal, confessional, poems set to music, poems that are meant to be shouted or whispered; there are poems addressed to his late wife, the painter Elizabeth Murray, to their children, and to the countless artists and poets he’s encountered over the last half century.

The books show the roots of Holman’s own personal mix of Appalachian storytelling, spoken-word poetry bravado, and New York whimsy and humor. Both poems are a raucous celebration of a life lived as art, and an invitation to the reader to join the party. In the words of poet Naomi Shihab Nye, "His life gusto and poetry voice keep the world turning.”

Special Guests: Adam Hamilton and Bob Holman.

My guest is Jonathan Haber. He's the author of Critical Thinking. Critical thinking is regularly cited as an essential twenty-first century skill, the key to success in school and work. Given our propensity to believe fake news, draw incorrect conclusions, and make decisions based on emotion rather than reason, it might even be said that critical thinking is vital to the survival of a democratic society. But what, exactly, is critical thinking? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Jonathan Haber explains how the concept of critical thinking emerged, how it has been defined, and how critical thinking skills can be taught and assessed.

You can check out Jonathan's site, LogicCheck.net, where uses the news of the day to teach practical critical-thinking skills. You can read more about his work in critical-thinking education http://www.degreeoffreedom.org.

Special Guest: Jonathan Haber.

My guest is Lee McIntyre. He's the author of The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience. Attacks on science have become commonplace. Claims that climate change isn't settled science, that evolution is “only a theory,” and that scientists are conspiring to keep the truth about vaccines from the public are staples of some politicians' rhetorical repertoire. Defenders of science often point to its discoveries (penicillin! relativity!) without explaining exactly why scientific claims are superior. In this book, Lee McIntyre argues that what distinguishes science from its rivals is what he calls “the scientific attitude”―caring about evidence and being willing to change theories on the basis of new evidence. The history of science is littered with theories that were scientific but turned out to be wrong; the scientific attitude reveals why even a failed theory can help us to understand what is special about science.

McIntyre offers examples that illustrate both scientific success (a reduction in childbed fever in the nineteenth century) and failure (the flawed “discovery” of cold fusion in the twentieth century). He describes the transformation of medicine from a practice based largely on hunches into a science based on evidence; considers scientific fraud; examines the positions of ideology-driven denialists, pseudoscientists, and “skeptics” who reject scientific findings; and argues that social science, no less than natural science, should embrace the scientific attitude. McIntyre argues that the scientific attitude―the grounding of science in evidence―offers a uniquely powerful tool in the defense of science.

Special Guest: Lee McIntyre.

For decades, statisticians, social scientists, psychologists, and economists (among them Nobel Prize winners) have spent massive amounts of precious time thinking about whether streaks actually exist. After all, a substantial number of decisions that we make in our everyday lives are quietly rooted in this one question: If something happened before, will it happen again? Is there such a thing as being in the zone? Can someone have a “hot hand”? Or is it simply a case of seeing patterns in randomness? Or, if streaks are possible, where can they be found?

In The Hot Hand, Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Cohen offers an unfailingly entertaining and provocative investigation into these questions. He begins with how a $35,000 fine and a wild night in New York revived a debate about the existence of streaks that was several generations in the making. We learn how the ability to recognize and then bet against streaks turned a business school dropout named David Booth into a billionaire, and how the subconscious nature of streak-related bias can make the difference between life and death for asylum seekers. We see how previously unrecognized streaks hidden amidst archival data helped solve one of the most haunting mysteries of the twentieth century, the disappearance of Raoul Wallenberg. Cohen also exposes how streak-related incentives can be manipulated, from the five-syllable word that helped break arcade profit records to an arc of black paint that allowed Stephen Curry to transform from future junior high coach into the greatest three-point shooter in NBA history. Crucially, Cohen also explores why false recognition of nonexistent streaks can have cataclysmic results, particularly if you are a sugar beet farmer or the sort of gambler who likes to switch to black on the ninth spin of the roulette wheel.

Special Guest: Ben Cohen.

My guest is Patrick Murrary. He was named the Monmouth University Polling Institute’s founding director in 2005. He is frequently called upon by the media to provide commentary on polling and the political world, including appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, PBS, and National Public Radio. During federal election years, Murray also serves as a national exit poll analyst for major networks. In the institute’s home state, Murray has appeared on numerous Power Lists of the most influential people in New Jersey politics.

My guest is Carol Ann Davis. Her new book The Nail in the Tree narrates her experience of raising two sons in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, on the day of and during the aftermath of the shooting there. Part memoir, part art-historical treatise, these meditations lead her to explore crucial subjects, including whether childhood can itself be both violent and generative, the possibility of the integration of trauma into daily life and artistic practice, and the role of the artist. Davis is the author of two previous poetry collections, Psalm (2007) and Atlas Hour (2011), both from Tupelo Press, and a professor of English at Fairfield University.

Special Guest: Carol Ann Davis.

My guest is Tony Jones. He's the author of numerous books, including Did God Kill Jesus? He also is the host of the Reverend Hunter podcast and the co-host of the Killer Serials podcast.

Special Guest: Tony Jones.

My guest is Barbara Freese. Her newest book is Industrial-Strength Denial: Eight Stories of Corporations Defending the Indefensible, from the Slave Trade to Climate Change. In it she argues that corporations faced with proof that they are hurting people or the planet have a long history of denying evidence, blaming victims, complaining of witch hunts, attacking their critics’ motives, and otherwise rationalizing their harmful activities. Denial campaigns have let corporations continue dangerous practices that cause widespread suffering, death, and environmental destruction. And, by undermining social trust in science and government, corporate denial has made it harder for our democracy to function.

Special Guest: Barbara Freese.